


A Rescue Mission

by doctorgeology



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Odin isn't the worst parent ever in this, Other, Slice of Life, child Loki, child Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 13:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14672139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorgeology/pseuds/doctorgeology
Summary: Thor is board, and when sitting with his friends and brother decides that today's game should be Valkyrie rescue. His mother surely needs rescuing, and if they should have to sneak past all the guards and his father to rescue her, then so be it.





	A Rescue Mission

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in about two hours, and is based off this post http://doctorfeliuzumaki.tumblr.com/post/170908049659/adamcansuckme-cannon-fannon-karlmordo (complete with my initial ramblings about this)  
> I thought about it, and I figured that I preferred the headcanon where Thor and Loki team up to defeat the evil that plagues children.

When Thor was of an age and mentality roughly equivalent to that of eight human years (time and maturity works differently for beings that know a bit more of what’s out there. Human children still believe that there is something in the wardrobe. They know it’s only clothes, but their beliefs haven’t quite aligned. An Asgardian child knows something is in the wardrobe, but their parents believe them because everyone saw it run in.) he and Loki still adored the Valkyrie. This would continue into their adult life, but eventually everyone accepts the low possibility of knowingly seeing those who are suspected to be long dead.

On this particular day the clouds hung low, and the rain showered down every so often. Thor was board, finished with his work for the day. He and Loki had spent their time that morning improving their grasp of the language spoken by the dwarves (All-Speak translated it for them, but wasn’t it cool? And you couldn’t quite translate the emotion with All-Speak. It would get across, but you missed out on the gestures, on the sign language the dwarves used to communicate over the thundering of their hammers on iron. The point was, as Thor repeatedly stressed to Fandral, was that it was really cool.). The afternoon had nothing pencilled in, leading to their current situation, where Thor and Loki sat on a sheltered balcony, waiting out another rain shower.

“What should we do?” Loki asked, turning to look at Thor. Thor knew that if he offered nothing, Loki would eventually conjure up an idea. When he did this, Thor tended to end up with the blame. It mattered not that Loki was the one who had suggested the idea, their mother would always find them, and Thor would end up claiming that it was his idea. Loki was his little brother, and was therefore, as all little brothers are, annoying. But he wasn’t allowed to get in trouble for it, unless Thor was getting him in trouble. It wasn’t logic that applied when Thor took the blame, but it really was. Loki was his little brother, so he had to help him out, even if that meant missing out on dessert that night.

Thor lent back and thought, staring up at the grey clouds. “I think we should practice for when we become Valkyrie.”

That made Loki sit up straighter. “How?”

“Well,” Thor said, pulling the idea together as he spoke. “I saw mother go into a room with a lot of strangers this morning. I think they kidnapped her.”

“Mother?” Loki said. He was younger than Thor, and whilst he had begun to lay the groundwork for his later God of Mischief title, for now he was just a boy. Now his imagination began to work. Of course. Their mother had been taken away. They would have to go and save her.

“Yes,” Thor continued. “I think they were Dark Elves.”

“Dark Elves!”

The Dark Elves were safe for the stories Frigga told. The elves agreed with Asgard that they deserved to be confined to the shadow of the history books, so when Thor and Loki would race around, pretending to fight off armies, there was less risk of offending the latest visiting ambassador.

“They’ve probably got mother in a cell, and she can’t escape. Father can’t hear her because there’s a magic spell on the door. We have to go and help her,” Thor declared.

“What do we do?” Loki asked. Thor considered for a minute.

“The guards would have noticed if she had been taken, so the ones here must be imposters,” he decided. “And father might be a fake as well. We shall have to be careful. We shall have to sneak past them all and find mother.”

“Okay,” Loki said. “Thor, I have a spell, mother was teaching me how to turn into something I’m not. I think I can get through the door. But I can’t do it for long, so I can’t use it to get past the guards.”

“That won’t matter,” Thor said. “You’re really good at hiding Loki, you’ll easily get past the guards. And if you get into trouble I’ll come and save you!”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Loki smiled, and he followed Thor inside. Their first obstacle was a guard making a casual round of the palace. They snuck behind a curtain (the palace had many curtains, and many a guard had been surprised by their partners and friends jumping out at them on slow days), and waited for him to pass. They crept along, hiding behind curtains, ducking under tables and diving for cover under weapon racks and tables holding heirlooms (the guards would, unbeknownst to the brothers, reach out to stabilise any weapons or heirlooms that appeared to be in danger of falling. After all, the eldest prince would be rather upset if his mother kept dessert from him that night, they had all smelt the chocolate that morning, and his little brother always looked so upset when he was caught trying to smuggle a portion of dessert to him. If they prevented any breakages due to, let’s say, ghosts, it would prevent any blame falling on the brothers.).

Eventually they reached the room they had seen their mother disappear into.

“Can I see the spell?” Thor whispered. Loki nodded, shutting his eyes. His magic swirled around him as he shrunk down, his small body being replaced by a green snake.

“That’s so cool!” Thor exclaimed, but not too loudly, keenly aware of the guards they had passed a minute earlier. He watched as Loki slithered towards the door, aiming for the gap between it and the floor. And then he heard footsteps.

“Loki!” he hissed, pulling the curtains in front of him. A few seconds later the footsteps came to a stop.

“Well,” his father said. “This is a surprise. A snake in the palace. I shall have to tell Thor later, he does love snakes.”

There was a pause, and then a thud. “I’ll keep it here, so I can show Thor later.”

The footsteps left, and Thor waited, holding his breath, for half a minute, before daring to poke his head out. There was an upturned bucket on the floor, hiding his little brother. He could hear his father returning. He took a deep breath and dashed out, tipping the bucket over and whispering for Loki to go. He ducked back behind the curtains as his father returned.

“Oh my,” his father said. “The snake seems to have escaped. What a pity. I shall tell Thor about it later anyway.”

And he left. He wasn’t a monster. Had Thor not tipped the bucket, he had planned to leave Loki for a minute at best before returning and tipping the bucket over, declaring that he thought the snake would be happier free.

He was an awkward man, not quite sure how to be an effective father and rule the nine realms. Giving the boys a simple obstacle, which their imaginations could spin out to become a realm, was his own awkward way of trying to entertain them.

Certain his father was gone, Thor crept over to the door. “Loki!” he whispered. “Loki it’s me! Can you open the door?”

There was a pause, and then the lock clicked and the door opened, revealing only Loki.

“Mother isn’t here,” he said, with the tone of a child who has suddenly realised something is a lot more serious than first thought. This tone can be applied to realising that dinner will be served in an hour instead of ten minutes, and to that poking the sleeping bear wasn’t quite as good an idea as it seemed five seconds ago. The sort of “I’m not crying, but I’m working my way towards it very rapidly” tone.

There was a rush of panic as Thor realised he didn’t know where to take them both, how to convince his little brother in the next five seconds that he didn’t know where their mother was either.

“Princes!”

Thor turned as a guard appeared at the end of the corridor.

“Princes! Are you looking for your mother?” the guard asked.

“Yes,” Thor said, puffing out his chest and moving to cover Loki.

“She’s away until this evening. Diplomatic meetings. She’ll be back before your bedtime I wager.”

“Really?” Loki said.

“Really,” the guard said. “Well, I should get back to work. You two look after yourselves now.”

“Okay,” Thor said as the guard walked away.

There was another pause.

“What do we do now?” Loki asked, calm returning to his young mind. Thor thought.

“We should protect Heimdall,” he said. “So mother can return safely. Shall we go? We can take Sif and the others, and they’ll help us protect him.”

“Okay,” Loki said, after taking a deep breath. Thor held out his hand.

“Shall we go?”

*

Sif, Hogun, Volstagg and Fandral were easily roped in to taking a trip out to Bifrost. They all ran along, taking the time to challenge each other to see who could slide the furthest along the Rainbow Bridge.

“Hello there,” Heimdall said as they charged in. “What brings you all here?”

“We’re here to protect you!” Thor declared. “So mother can return safely tonight!”

“What are we protecting him from?” Sif asked. This made Thor hesitate. He hadn’t quite reached the point where he discovered what they were protecting Heimdall from. An army wasn’t feasible, people rarely visited the Bifrost at this point in the day, so waiting for an army to appear would take too long. Wild animals? Any dogs Heimdall could coax to the Bifrost tended to be very friendly, more interested in licking everyone and saying hello than being angry beasts (Heimdall had a way with the small pets of Asgard, and could, when surrounded by restless children, quietly summon a small route to the Bifrost and bring a pet to him. Was it a very mundane use of his abilities? Yes. Was it an effective way of using his abilities? Yes.). A dragon? No, supper was in two hours, and you needed longer than that to defeat a dragon. A dragon was a day long task, preferably with a lunch break where you gathered in a warm room and ate your fill.

“From boredom!” he declared. “And everything else!”

His method of delivery got a cheer from the rest of the group, and they all scattered across the room. Whenever Heimdall looked like he was about to yawn, someone would dash out, yelling loudly, forcing Heimdall to dodge away. Occasionally, to make sure it was really Heimdall, Thor would lead the whole group into an attack.

About an hour in, Heimdall sat down and sighed loudly. This was an obvious sign of boredom and exhaustion, so to counter it Loki summoned a handful of ice, chucking a snowball at Heimdall. Heimdall dodged, and then spent two minutes chasing Loki around.

Five minutes later, Heimdall let out a yell, a mouse running away from his foot (the children didn’t need to know it was an illusion). Sif chased it out of the Bifrost, leaping over Thor to reach her target.

Sometime after that, the entire Bifrost trembled (again, the children didn’t need to know it was Heimdall’s magic). This resulted in everyone leaping at Heimdall and dragging him to ground, covering him to protect him from imaginary debris.

When Heimdall stepped up to open the Bifrost, the children were encouraging a cat into the Bifrost so Heimdall would have someone to play with when they went for dinner. It was until the lights hit them that they all looked up and saw Frigga stepping out.

“Mother!” Loki exclaimed as he and Thor charged over. He leapt straight into her arms.

“Hello darlings!” Frigga said, holding Loki up with one arm and extending her free hand to Thor. “What are you doing out here? Isn’t it time for supper?”

“Hi Missus Queen! We were making sure Heimdall was safe so he could bring you back!” Fandral said.

“Is that so? Well you seem to have done a fine job. Sif, Hogun, Fandral, Volstagg, will you be joining us for dinner?”  
“Yes Missus Queen!” the four chorused.

“Shall we head back to the palace then?”

“Okay!”

They started back after Heimdall had accepted their gift of a small cat, and thanked each of them for their help that day.

“So what did you all do today besides protect Heimdall?” Frigga asked as they walked along.

“We did loads!” Hogun said.

“We were working until Thor and Loki came and found us-“ Fandral said.

“And then we-“ Volstagg began, before being cut off by everyone else.

“One at a time,” Frigga reminded them, quietly adjusting Loki in her arm. Their adventure had tired him, causing him to doze against her. “Thor, why don’t you start?”

And so Thor began to detail their adventures of the day. As far as he and the others were convinced, growing up would only allow them to fight more solid enemies, and maybe someday really big dragons.

It would be fun.


End file.
